Happy Easter! 4 Traditional Ways To Celebrate!

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Happy Easter! For Christians, Easter Day is one of the most important days of the year, two days after Good Friday, but this festival existed long before the advent of Christianity.

It is on March 21, the vernal equinox, that night and day stand in perfect balance, with light on the increase. It is a time of great fertility, new growth, and newborn animals, and was celebrated as such by Celtic religions, long before Christianity arrived on the scene.

Following the vernal equinox, the next full moon is called the Ostara and is sacred to Eostre, the Saxon Lunar Goddess of fertility. From this come both the word estrogen, whose two symbols were the egg and the rabbit, and the word Easter.

Christians Adopted Pagan Emblems For Easter

As they did with many other already-existing festivals, Christianity adopted these emblems for Easter, which is indeed celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox by most Christians. (Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter on a different date.)

According to the Bible, Jesusí death and resurrection occurred around the time of the Jewish Passover, which was celebrated on the first full moon following the vernal equinox. In 325CE the Council of Nicaea established that Easter would be held on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the vernal equinox. Guess where they got that idea from?

Traditionally Jesus of Nazareth was born a week before New Year's Day and was circumcised on his 8th day which fell on New Year's Day. Jesus was a Jew and his parent's most likely observed the Jewish lunar/solar calendar in which Rosh Hashannah falls in early fall, September or October by our Gregorian calendar. It must have been the Roman Empire that first celebrated the New Year shortly after the winter solstice.

I too like the cycle of life reminder - as a pagan I love to see it but in Australia Easter is in autumn so not as much fun - I hope every religious celebration would make people behave better towards those that are different, the same , the insane , the oddballs.....
the planet is small.

In simple terms, Easter (and Christmas) are fundamentally important to Christianity, whatever traditions shape the way in which they are celebrated. Easter Day coincides with Passover, because the Last Supper before the crucifixion was a Passover meal and the church decided to continue that association.

The fact that the two celebrations use pagan dates (vernal equinox and winter solstice), the pagan derived name of Easter and lots of pagan imagery (eggs, holly and ivy, mistletoe etc.) is only window dressing that has persisted in tradition. While early missionaries believed in their message, they knew that the people would be unwilling to give up their established "let your hair down" parties, so they hijacked them. Hence Christmas and Easter are a good time to be had by all and the church has not become a kill-joy.

That doesn't dilute Easter and Christmas and it doesn't make them pagan festivals, it just means that we celebrate them in a traditional way that the first Christians would not have expected.

You write "For Christians, Easter Day is one of the most important days of the year, two days after Good Friday, but this festival existed long before the advent of Christianity." but then you think of Catholics and many Protestants who use the heathen feast and Catholic feast day, while in reality they should remember the day instigated the New Covenant on the night he was going to be betrayed and the day he was going to be killed. A good Christian should keep to the holy day made by God by the Exodus arrangement from Egypt and by the arrangement to provide a Messiah, Jesus Christ. Christians should remember that what Jesus had done on the stake to save so many people. And that has nothing to do with easter (goddess Eastre) easter bunnies or bells bringing eggs around in the world. the reality was that a man died and was risen to a new life by the Creator of all things the Only One God.